adafruit

Manufacturing never left America. Even during the recession, good people were still building good things. Recently, though, thanks to the maker movement, small-scale manufacturing is seeing a renaissance throughout the world, something the president of Shinola, Vice President of Grado Labs, and founder of Adafruit will discuss at Disrupt NY. Each of these people have a unique vantage point on… Read More

Google is now selling its own Glass-compatible frames for prescription lenses, but they’ll set you back $225 a pair, lenses not included. That’s a bit steep, especially when you’ve already forked over $1,500 for Glass itself. A DIY project from design studio Pixil 3D can modify Glass to work with your existing prescription glasses for under $1 in material costs, provided… Read More

Our favorite hacker in the world, Ladyada AKA Limor Fried, spent a good few minutes talking to President Obama in one of his famous Fireside Hang-outs. The video, above, features Ladyada and her pink hair grilling the president on patent reform and STEM education. Read More

The $35/$25 Raspberry Pi microcomputer is being used by hardware hackers to power all sorts of creative projects. Including this Raspberry Pi powered laptop, which ties in the Motorola Atrix laptop dock to turn the microcomputer into a portable computer. Which surely must be the coolest use of that piece of kit to date. Read More

The weekend isn’t upon us just yet, but here’s a little project to tuck away for when the Sunday doldrums set in — the New York-based tinkerers/part suppliers at Adafruit Industries have worked up a way to give your old pair of Chuck Taylors a bit of luminescent DIY flair. Read More

There’s a long-held notion that China should be the go-to place for those in need of inexpensive manufactured products, but some prominent makers don’t buy it. Our own John Biggs sat down with Adafruit Industries founder Limor Fried (perhaps better known as Lady Ada) for a chat on the Disrupt Ny stage that quickly turned to deal with the benefits of manufacturing hardware close… Read More

Recently consumer electronics have tended to be more about closing things down then opening them up, but New York-based Adafruit is working to help reverse that trend, and to make it so that people aren’t afraid of what’s inside their devices, and instead become more comfortable with electronics components and the concepts behind how gadgets actually work. Adafruit founder and… Read More

We often give short shrift to hardware at Disrupt mostly because investors are afraid to look at companies that can’t pivot without trashing 30 days of inventory. No longer. Limor Fried AKA Ladyada will join me on stage to talk about what it takes to build a profitable, cool, and amazingly popular hardware company out of a dorm room. Read More

Adafruit, the DIY electronics website and marketplace, is espousing the popular strategy of “get em’ young” with a new live action short video series broadcast on YouTube. The series, called Circuit Playground, takes an alphabetical approach to teaching kids about the basics of circuits, components and concepts that will come in handy if the tots watching have aspirations… Read More

Latest Crunch Report

While I don’t often hold stock in random pronouncements by magazines, I’m shocked and thrilled that Entrepreneur Magazine named Limor Fried, founder of Adafruit Industries, as their 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year. Limor runs a $4.5 million company with 25 employees and she produces some of the coolest electronic gadgets around. Read More

For your perusal: a Geiger counter made in the style of HR Giger. Why? Because this is the Internet and people do stuff for attention, that’s why.
The creator, Steve D of Mad Art Lab, bought a real Geiger counter from Adafruit Industries and wrapped it up in plastic bones from a skeleton model. A coat of black paint and some creepy pipes and he had a complete Giger counter that looked like… Read More

CAT IS NOT FOR SALE
Our good friend Phil Torrone sent us this list of cool homebrew deals on Chumby devices, Adafruit boards, and other goodness.
Fist, you’ve got some Chumby-powered devices that are actually little Linux PCs. The Infocast, for example, is $129 on Best Buy. This thing has an 800MHz processor and small screen and can be used either as a little info monitor or as a… Read More

Never ones to let any aluminum surface go unsullied, PT and Ladyada just etched their first iPad and it came out marvelously. These guys etch all sorts of things but their real claim to fame is in DIY electronics, of which their website offers in surfeit.
Very cool stuff if you don’t mind voiding your warranty. Read More